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Thursday, July 6, 2017

Deciphering the Overlook's Creatures

I know the Overlook is proud of the fact that most of its reviewers are not seasoned writers, and in many cases are not exactly horror aficionados. But there are some instances where the review submitted would do you absolutely no good unless you knew the creature in question and could make out their scribbled thoughts. Case:

“I was so scared almost peed my pants. I love found footage. I hate ghosts, and I hate scares. But together it pretty much made my...

anxiety go through the roof. I almost enjoyed being scared, but I hate being scared.”

...

I think this has to be one of the most contradictory couple of sentences I’ve ever read. This scared little goblin seems to be having an internal conflict about what he’d just watched; it was filled with all these elements he didn’t like, but he enjoyed it, maybe? The catch 22 of just these two sentiments: “I love found footage,” and “I hate ghosts,” is just perplexing. I mean, UFO Abduction aside, some of the first, and certainly the most common found footage films contain ghosts. Lots of them. So I would just chalk that up to strange word choice. And that last sentence, “I almost enjoyed being scared, but I hate being scared.” What would you guess this movie was ultimately rated by the quivering creature? Probably pretty low, right? I mean they almost wet themselves. Nope, 5 Stars!

Editing this mini stream of consciousness was rough, but it basically boiled down to a couple of cuts and some conjunctions to figure out where this critter stood with Hell House LLC. That and to tie these scattered statements into an coherent thought that works as a written sentence, as opposed to a spoken one. The end result is below.

"I was so scared, I almost peed my pants. I love found footage, but I hate ghosts and scares, so Hell House LLC pretty much made my anxiety go through the roof. I had fun watching this movie, even though I don't have fun being scared."

Incidentally, now you can match the text to the voice, as Dabbles makes a guest appearance on episode 46 of The Overlook Hour!